Monday, December 31, 2012

It is interesting to see a conservative like Jon Huntsman repeatedly slam the lunacy of today's GOP. I personally believe that had Huntsman been the GOP nominee instead of Romney, the election results might have differed..Huntsman is correct that the party has become too extreme and unwilling to accept objective reality not to mention simple math. The problem is now that the GOP base has become so insane that the GOP nomination process makes it nearly impossible for a non-extremist - or someone unwilling to prostitute them-self to the extremists - to secure the nomination. It is also noteworthy that Huntsman indicated that states should be allowed to enact gay marriage laws - something anathema to the GOP's Christofascist elements. Here are excerpts from an article in the Daily Telegraph:

In an interview with the Daily Telegraph, the former Utah governor and
leading Republican
moderate said the party must accept "a strong dose of libertarianism"
on social issues and allow state governments to move ahead with gay
marriage.

Offering his prescription for the party's renewal, Mr Huntsman said the early
stages of the Republican presidential primaries rewarded extreme
conservatives rather than "long-term competitive candidates" who
could effectively take on the Democrats.

he scale of Mitt Romney's defeat in November has left the party
reeling and may create a fresh opening for the socially-moderate but
fiscally-conservative ideas Mr Huntsman espoused in the primary.
"The party right now is a holding company that's devoid of a soul and it
will be filled up with ideas over time and leaders will take their proper
place," he said.

Mr Huntsman urged the party to "reflect a little bit on our winning
chapters" and face up to a demographic reality where white
conservatives represent a shrinking portion of the electorate. "We can't be known as a party that's fear-based and doesn't believe in
math," he said. "In the end it will come down to a party that
believes in opportunity for all our people, economic competitiveness and a
strong dose of libertarianism."

He said he "absolutely" supported individual states being allowed to
implement gay marriage, saying that Abraham Lincoln, the first Republican
president, believed that "equality under the law is an American value".

Mr Huntsman cautioned that the improving economy would put Mr Obama's
Democratic successor in a strong position for 2016 but said that eight years
of incumbency would take a toll on the President's party.

One cannot help but wonder what the rest of the world thinks of the political games being played in Congress principally by Republicans and to a lesser extent by Congressional Democrats. The stock markets are swinging as hope of a deal grows and then diminishes. It's not the way that the world's only true super power should be governed. The New York Times reports that a deal may be shaping up. I will believe it when I see it because I truly think today's GOP is insane enough to push the country into crisis. Here are article highlights on what may be in the deal, if it is struck:

Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican
leader, on Monday reached agreement on a tentative deal to stave off large tax
increases starting on Tuesday, but remained stuck on whether and how to stop
$110 billion in across-the-board spending cuts in 2013, an official familiar
with the negotiations said.

Mr. Obama used the occasion to warn Republicans that
he would continue to press for more tax increases even beyond whatever may be
included in a deal now. “If Republicans think I will finish the job of deficit
reduction through spending cuts alone,” he said, then “they’ve got another think
coming. That’s not how it’s going to work.”

Republicans responded to the president’s speech
angrily, accusing him of “moving the goal posts” just when a deal was in reach.
They said that they knew that the two sides still had to agree on how to suspend
the automatic spending cuts, but that they generally agreed that such a
suspension would be offset, at least partially, by spending cuts elsewhere.
Instead, the president said any deal to turn off the so-called sequester had to
be financed by tax increases and spending cuts in concert.

Under the emerging deal, income taxes would rise to
39.6 percent from 35 percent on income over $400,000 for single people and
$450,000 for couples. Above those income levels, dividends and capital gains tax
rates would also rise, to 20 percent from 15 percent.

The official familiar with the deal stressed that
taxes would rise in some sense on the top 2 percent of earners, as Mr. Obama had
wanted. That is because the deal would reinstate provisions to tax law, ended by
the Bush tax cuts of 2001, that phase out personal exemptions and deductions for
the affluent. Those phaseouts, under the agreement, would begin at $250,000 for
single people and $300,000 for couples.

The estate
tax would also rise, but considerably less than Democrats had wanted. The
value of estates over $5 million would be taxed at 40 percent, up from the
current 35 percent. Democrats had wanted a 45 percent rate on inheritances
larger than $3.5 million.

Under the deal, the new rates on income, investment
and inheritances would be permanent. Mr. Obama and the Democrats would be granted a
five-year extension of tax cuts they won in the 2009 stimulus law for
middle-class and working-poor taxpayers.

Democrats also secured a full year’s extension of
unemployment insurance without strings attached, a $30 billion cost.

All combined, the official said, the new package would
raise about $600 billion over 10 years, compared to the revenue generated if
current tax levels were simply extended.

With Illinois joining the states that will be taking up marriage equality in that state's upcoming coming legislative session, Barack Obama has climbed off the face and is advocating for passage of marriage equality. One can already hear the sputtering and envision the spittle flying around the Christofascists who are increasingly seeing a rejection of their effort to force their foul, fear and hate filled religious beliefs. Truth be told, America will not reach its constitutional promises of equality and religious freedom until the power and special privileges of the Christian Right are destroyed. Rather than foster love and equality, the main stock in trade of these Christofascists is hatred and division and an increasingly shrill effort to retain white conservative Christian privilege. The Washington Blade looks at Obama's endorsement of marriage equality in Illinois. Here are excerpts:

The White House announced on Saturday in a Chicago newspaper that President Obama supports the legalization of same-sex marriage in the state where he once served as both a state legislator and a U.S. senator.

Shin Inouye, a White House spokesperson, was quoted in an Chicago Sun-Times article as saying President Obama would vote in favor of marriage equality in Illinois and that position is consistent with his earlier stated belief that same-sex couples should be able to marry. The Washington Blade independently confirmed Obama’s support for the measure.

“While the president does not weigh in on every measure being considered by state legislatures, he believes in treating everyone fairly and equally, with dignity and respect,” Inouye said.

“As he has said, his personal view is that it’s wrong to prevent couples who are in loving, committed relationships, and want to marry, from doing so,” Inouye said. “Were the President still in the Illinois State Legislature, he would support this measure that would treat all Illinois couples equally.”

Bills to legalize marriage equality were introduced in the Illinois House and Senate in February almost a year ago. Sen. Heather Steans (D-Chicago) and out State Rep. Greg Harris (D-Chicago) are the chief sponsors of the legislation. Bolstered by the wins for marriage equality at the ballot on Election Day, supporters of the legislation in Illinois have indicated they’ll push for passage of the bills before the current legislative session ends on Jan. 8. Gov. Pat Quinn (D) has already announced his support for marriage equality.

Things are down to the absolute 11th deadline and Congressional Republicans still are refusing to cut any kind of deal. They would simply prefer to severely harm the country, possibly send the nation's economy back into recession, and throw millions of unemployed workers to the wolves rather than stand up to their lunatic base and face the potential of a primary challenge by some knuckle dragging moron such as Todd Akin or Richard Mourdoch favored by the Christofascists and Tea Party. A piece in the Washington Post sums this phenomenon up well. Here's the important quote:

Everyone else needs to keep one eye (at least) on their next race. That mentality means that for the vast majority of Republicans in Congress, a
deal is more dangerous than no deal. A deal creates the possibility of a primary
challenge from their ideological right in districts and even states that, by and
large, went heavily against Obama in November. No deal means they might — with
the emphasis on “might” — face some blow back from constituents who want them to
get something done for the good of the country and put the partisanship and
politics aside.

And so, if you are wondering why congressional Republicans won’t, in the
words of Obama, just “take the deal,” now you know. They have every political
reason not to.

This is the result of allowing the GOP to be taken over by ignorance embracing religious extremist and veritable Tea Party cretins. The GOP is now totally unfit to govern and needs to be killed off as a viable national political party. The ultimate irony is that red states receive more in federal dollars than they send to Washington and will be hit by sequestration spending cuts more than blue states. Virginia will be particularly hard hit, yet its majority GOP congressional delegation is literally shoving the country over the fiscal cliff. Locally, that means Scott Rigell, Randy Forbes and Bob Wittman will bear direct responsibility for whatever adverse consequences ensue. Would that more moderates and independents had understood just how lethal the GOP and these three local members of Congress have become this past November.

Sunday, December 30, 2012

Among the many untruths constantly regurgitated by the Christofascists is the claim that marriage has throughout recorded history been one man and one woman. The Old Testament its self shows that this claim is a lie since polygamy, not monogamy was the norm and marriage might better be described one man and numerous women at a time. A parallel lie is that homosexuality is unnatural and that no nation has survived that ever accepted homosexuality. This story line comes most often from upstart pastors and/or first or second generation of professional Christians ironically from a nation a mere 236 years in existence. For comparison, ancient Rome existed for nearly three times this time span and in Russia the Romanov family alone ruled for more than 300 years.

Sadly, the truth never seems to be a high ideal with conservative Christians who rewrite history to fit their fascist like agenda (hence my use of the term Christoifascists). In reality, outside of possibly ancient Israel which wanted to mark itself as different from all other cultures, same sex relations have been accepted universally among disparate groups ranging from the classical Greeks and Romans, the ancient Persian Empire, to Native American tribes to the Far East, including China. Indeed, it is only where Christianity - in many ways a repackaged version of the ancient Mythras beliefs mixed with a large dose of extremism from the Old Testament's Leviticus thanks largely to St. Paul - and its Abrahamic cousin, Islam, have gone that same sex relations have come to be condemned.

Thus it is interesting that increasingly - outside of backward and ignorant areas such as equatorial Africa, where extremist versions of Christianity are flourishing with the help of American Christofascists - many older cultures are belatedly discovering that anti-gay rhetoric and Christianity based puritanism are the imported customs and mores. A case in point is China, which is undergoing a sexual revolution. A new book, Behind the Red Door : Sex in China, looks at this phenomen. Here are highlights from a review in the Los Angeles Review of Books:

But the book’s greatest strength is in carving out a distinctive story for China — and showing that analogies to the Western 1960s sexual revolution are misleading. The Chinese are not so much shedding the mantle of history, Burger illustrates, as they are rediscovering their country’s past. And that past includes a sexual openness that puts the West to shame.
¤
Beginning as early as the 400s BCE, Daoist sex manuals instructed men, in minute detail, how to prolong ejaculation while bringing a woman to multiple orgasms.

That nonjudgmental attitude extended to homosexuality as well. In the Daoist view, sex between men was not so much morally wrong as pointless, as it did not facilitate the accumulation of precious qi. Sex between women, meanwhile, was implicitly condoned. Roughly half of the emperors of the Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 AD) kept young male lovers — a fact we know because imperial scribes dutifully recorded their affairs in works like Biographies of the Emperors’ Male Favorites. Such tolerance prevailed up through the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), when artists produced sex scrolls depicting intercourse between men.

To be sure, Chinese history was not without spells of prudishness. Eras in which the Confucian emphasis on hierarchy and control trumped the Daoist interest in nature were generally not great for sexual freedom. A reactionary swing in the early Ming dynasty brought with it the burning of erotic novels and woodblocks. And yet, Burger shows, the pendulum most often rested on sexual openness. Once the conservative spell had passed, the erotic literature industry again flourished.

It was only in the second half of the 19th century, as Western values seeped into China following the Opium Wars, that puritanism became more entrenched. . . . . Mao took this notion to a new level after 1949, stamping out prostitution and mandating an androgynous, sexless style of dress, even as he himself maintained stables of mistresses.

The irony is that by the time Deng Xiaoping initiated the economic reforms that would usher in sexual openness, licentiousness had been rebranded as Western “spiritual pollution.” The initial government line on HIV was that it had been brought to China by foreigners. Ditto homosexuality; for years, official lore held that China had no gay or lesbian people. So much for Biographies of the Emperors’ Male Favorites.

As Chinese embrace their rediscovered sexual freedom, the notion that carnality is a foreign import is an increasingly difficult sell. Beginning in 1993, the government allowed the establishment of sex stores, provided they maintained an ostensibly medical focus. Employees at Adam and Eve, the first establishment in Beijing, wore white lab coats and counseled customers on cures for erectile dysfunction. Today, China is reportedly home to 200,000 sex stores, and dried deer penis and other traditional medicines have been supplemented by lifelike sex dolls and French maid costumes.

But as an explanation of the dueling forces within Chinese society, Behind the Red Door is spot-on. Among the book’s more delicious details is the list of seven categories of sex worker devised by Chinese police in the 1990s. . . . . And yet the list also suggests a certain innocence — a pragmatic approach to sex in a culture where it has been intermittently criminalized but not indelibly branded as immoral, a culture that will never have the same tortured relationship to contraception, or gay sex, or sexual fantasy that we do in the United States.

An article in the Richmond Times-Dispatch looks at the Commonwealth of Virginia's own approaching fiscal cliff. It's interesting that many of the problems cited that will make Virginia less competitive in the future and more fiscally insolvent track directly to the policies of the Republican Party of Virginia and its refusal to raise taxes to fund desperately needed spending on transportation, infrastructure and education. While not specifically mentioned in the article I would also cite the Virginia GOP's continued push for reactionary social policies that make the state unattractive to progressive businesses that are hesitant to try to relocate employees with almost Medieval laws on equality and women's rights. Should Ken "Kookinelli" Cuccinelli be elected governor next November, the state's decline would likely accelerate. Here are some article highlights:

A national task force says Virginia may be heading toward its own version of a “fiscal cliff,” despite the state’s well-deserved reputation for prudent financial management.

Virginia could be heading for a major fall because of its reliance on federal government spending and its failure to fashion a sustained source of revenue for transportation improvements essential to economic growth.

“The problems that threaten other states the Task Force studied also threaten Virginia; but, most of the problems are less worrisome thanks to the state’s sound financial management and good fortune,” the report states. “The two exceptions are potential cuts in federal spending and chronically unmet transportation needs.”

The study released this month also raises concerns about the decline in state spending for public education, the gradual privatizing of higher education by substituting higher tuition and fees for state support, and declining state investment in infrastructure because of limited debt capacity.

Options for raising revenues to pay for public services are dwindling, especially for Virginia’s 170 counties, cities and towns, it says, while costs are rising, especially in the state’s bare-bones Medicaid program for the poor and the public employee pension obligations that the state has systematically underfunded.

“The state’s planning documents indicate that Virginia’s general fund revenues will not be adequate to fund obligations from prior years (debt service and pensions), keep up with health care costs, restore recession slashes to local aid, improve health and education services, and maintain and improve transportation and other infrastructure,” the report concludes.

[O]ne of the advisers on the Virginia report said the state is living off past accomplishments that can’t be sustained without changes in approach. “The problem now is we need some investments,” said James J. Regimbal Jr., a former Senate Finance Committee budget analyst who advises local governments on fiscal policy and recently authored a biting critique of the McDonnell administration’s approach to funding transportation through tolls and private partnerships.

Local government advocates focused on the report’s warning of a reckoning ahead in the next four to six years as Virginia runs out of money for transportation improvements and other investments. “We’re coming to a time in which the ‘Virginia way,’ which means relying on economic growth to generate the revenue that pay for public services, is no longer going to be able to pay the tab,” said Neal Menkes, director of fiscal policy at the Virginia Municipal League.

Virginia is more dependent on federal spending than any state in the country, said the task force, which noted that Moody’s Investors Service already has placed the state on a credit watch because of the potential for federal spending cuts that could cost the state 122,800 jobs, $7.3 billion in wages and $10.5 billion in annual state gross product.

Transportation is the other elephant in the room for state policymakers, the report states. “Inadequate funding has proved chronic and resulted in the substitution of capital funds for operations and maintenance and a growing dependence on federal funds.” The task force notes gridlock on transportation funding since Virginia last increased the gasoline tax 25 years ago, as well as changes in vehicle efficiency and driving habits that have eroded the value of the tax by 45 percent.

Virginia’s Medicaid program ranks 48th in the country in eligibility and benefits even though the state ranks seventh in per capita income, the report notes. Expansion would bring an estimated $21 billion in federal spending the first seven years and generate more than 30,000 jobs in health care by some estimates, as well as provide health coverage to more than 400,000 Virginians without it. But expansion also would cost Virginia more than $1 billion over 10 years, according to the McDonnell administration’s most recent estimate, at a time when Medicaid costs outpace revenue growth to pay them.

In the end, the task force suggests that Virginia faces a politically difficult decision about taxes and investments. “Will the state’s leaders determine which crucial public investments must be made?” it asks. “Will they make the case to taxpayers for the need to raise revenues and use the golden AAA credit to leverage those revenues for tomorrow’s infrastructure?”

As long as the GOP controls the General Assembly and the governorship, the answer to the study's last question is a resounding "no." Virginia will continue to decline thanks to the Virginia GOP's backward and greed driven policies.

Other than the Christofascists in the GOP there are few elements of the GOP base I despise more than the so-called Tea Party crowd. It's open embrace of ignorance, greed, bigotry and self-centered policies, not to mention it's less than subtle racism mark it as a toxic threat to constitutional government. Although because of the Tea Party's significant overlap with the Christofascists, none of this should be a surprise. What is perhaps more of a surprise is how over a little more than a two year period the Tea Party and its Christofacist allies are on the verge of destroying the Republican Party - or at least the GOP as it existed for many decades when logic, reason, intellect, responsible governing and true conservatism mattered. All of these former attributes of the GOP have been swept away and replaced by madness and an almost anarchist mentality where destruction of the country and its economy do not matter a whit if a shift from extremist ideology is required. A somewhat lengthy article in the Washington Post looks at the Tea Party's foul influence on the GOP. Here are some excerpts:

The Gadsden flag, which flew proudly over the
2010 midterm elections, now lies in tatters — rent by internal disagreements,
losses among its most visible standard-bearers and a growing sense that the tea
party movement, which once looked like it could transform American politics,
will soon be nothing more than a blip in the country’s collective memory.

The movement’s journey from boom to bust is the story of American politics
writ large. The tea party’s ups and downs (in 2012, mostly downs) highlight some
of the key forces shaping today’s battles — from the fissures that threaten to destroy the Republican Party
to the perils of a leaderless or multi-leader effort to the difference between
proving a point and winning.

No one person more embodies the fruitful-turned-fractious relationship that
the tea party has enjoyed with the political world (and itself) than the man
whom the movement made speaker of the House after the 2010 elections: John
Boehner.

The debt-ceiling fight of 2011 was a sign of things to
come for Boehner. The speaker engaged in long and serious talks with President
Obama aimed at not simply raising the country’s debt limit but also addressing
our long-term budget problems. But as it became clear that Boehner was going to
have to give to get, the tea party crowd in the House, who saw the debt ceiling
vote as a chance to tie the government’s purse strings, made clear that they
wouldn’t be going along to get along.

Then came the 2012 elections, a rebuke of the tea party’s ideas and leaders.
Sensing an opportunity to wrest control of his party, or at least the House GOP,
back from the fringe, Boehner went on offense.

[Boehner's] Plan B never made it to the House floor. The speaker and Majority Leader Eric
Cantor couldn’t come close to securing the votes required. The defeat was spurred by the tea party, which saw Boehner’s plan not as a
way to put political pressure on the president but as an unnecessary sacrifice
of a core principle. That principle? It’s never okay to raise taxes on
anyone. As Boehner’s strategy sunk, and with it, his power as speaker, it was the lawmakers he had punished
who celebrated most heartily.

Huelskamp’s victory, of course, was Pyrrhic. With Boehner marginalized, Obama
and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid have been left to sort out a fiscal cliff
deal — one that almost certainly will be worse for Republicans than what Boehner
proposed.

It wasn’t just in legislative battles where the tea party proved a point but
lost the fight in 2012. Indiana’s Senate race showed the promise and peril of the movement. Sen. Dick
Lugar, who was first elected in 1976 and had been easily reelected since then,
faced a primary challenge from his ideological right from state Treasurer
Richard Mourdock, a little-known but decidedly more tea-party-friendly
candidate.

Mourdock’s win-then-loss epitomized the tea party’s steep decline, but he was
far from the only GOP candidate who sacrificed victory at the altar of ideology.
Rep. Allen West, running in a swing district in Florida, spent time speculating
about how many communists there might be in Congress.
(Eighty-one, in case you were wondering.) When asked about his feelings on
abortion, Rep. Joe Walsh, running in a Democratic-leaning, suburban Chicago
district, insisted that “there is no such exception as life of the mother.” (He
lost by nine points.)

The tea party didn’t catch a single break in
Election 2012. Take Missouri, where the defeat of Todd “legitimate rape” Akin in the Senate race was laid at the
feet of the tea party. The problem with that theory? The major tea party groups
had backed Akin’s primary opponents; he won on the strength of his support among
social conservatives.

[T]he tea party needed a second act but had no director. And no one could even
agree on what the script should be. The result? Chaos. . . . . A movement can become something bigger only if it understands the difference
between winning a battle and winning a war — or between a moral victory and an
actual one. The tea party won a few of the former in 2012 but almost none of the
latter.

Candidly, until the Republican Party finds a way to jettison the Tea Party crowd and the Christofascist, the extremism and insanity - and the threat to constitutional government - will only increase. These people belong in an insane asylum, not in control of a major political party.

Let's be clear about one thing. The federal Defense of Marriage Act ("DOMA") has one true purpose: discriminating against same sex married couples. It has nothing to do with "protecting marriage" or the "sanctity of marriage" despite whatever lies and disingenuous claims that bloviating cows like Maggie Gallagher or child rapists protectors in the Catholic Church hierarchy may claim. When enacted almost all of the testimony and posturing by politicians in Congress spoke of religious beliefs on marriage and disapproval of LGBT couples and individuals who fail to conform to Christianist religious beliefs. Discrimination, disparate treatment and punishment of gays were and are the sole basis for DOMA. Anyone who claims otherwise is a liar. DOMA goes against everything the First Amendment and its promise of religious freedom and the Equal Protection Clause stand for. While the harms experienced by legally married same sex couples - ten states now allow same sex marriage - are many, the situation of bi-national couples is perhaps the most glaringly egregious as they face the prospect of deportation because of DOMA regardless of their talents and merits. All because of one religious based law. In contrast, with few restrictions the U. S. citizen half of a straight married couple can immediately have his/her spouse granted permanent residency. A piece in the Washington Post looks at the hate based bigotry that continues under DOMA. Here are excerpts:

Kelly Costello and Fabiola Morales had a
storybook wedding in the summer of 2011, with 12 bridesmaids and matching white
gowns. Their fathers gave them away at a Unitarian ceremony in the District, and
both extended families were on hand for dancing and champagne afterwards.

But because of a law that denies federal rights and benefits to gay spouses,
the Potomac couple could soon be forced to live 4,000 miles apart. Morales, a
registered nurse with two U.S. academic degrees, is a native of Peru. If she
were a man, Costello could automatically sponsor her for a green card. But
because they are both women, Morales could become deportable as soon as her
student visa expires next year.

Morales and Costello, 30, an elementary school teacher of English as a second
language, are among a growing number of binational gay couples who are caught between state laws
that allow them to marry and federal laws that bar the U.S. citizen spouse from
sponsoring the immigrant spouse for legal residency. Advocates estimate that
more than 36,000 such couples are in the same situation. The 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, known as DOMA, defines
marriage as the legal union between and man and a woman. It denies gay spouses a
long list of federal benefits, including access to pension and inheritance funds
after their partner dies, as well as blocking their right to immigrate through
marriage.

However, 10 states and the District have moved to legalize gay marriage since
DOMA was passed. As the concept of same-sex legal unions has gained more public
acceptance, a legal and political movement against DOMA has grown. Lawyers for
the Obama administration have found that portions of the law
are unconstitutional, and federal courts in eight cases around the country have
agreed.

Two weeks ago, the Supreme Court announced it would hear arguments on the
law’s constitutionality this spring, based on a challenge by the American Civil
Liberties Union in which Edie Windsor, a widow whose same-sex spouse died, was
forced to pay $363,000 in federal estate taxes that a husband would not have had
to pay.

If the high court rules in favor of Windsor, it will wipe
out the same section of DOMA that denies immigration rights to gay foreign
spouses.

“This law hurts same-sex couples in many ways, and immigration is one of the
cruelest,” said Ian Thompson, a legal adviser at the ACLU in Washington. He
noted that when DOMA became law, it was mostly symbolic, because no states
allowed same-sex marriage. “Today, you have thousands of couples whose legal
marriages are not recognized by the federal government,” he said. “Now the harms
are tangible.”

Supposed "orginalists" like Justice Antonin Scalia - who veritably drip with anti-gay animus while pontificating against gay marriage - ignore the violence they do to the Founding Father's intent for true religious freedom. Thomas Jefferson summed up those like Scalia and those who voted for and continue to support DOMA well in the Preamble to the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom which remains a part of the Code of Virginia, although it is utterly ignored by the Virginia GOP:

[A]ll attempts to influence it [religious belief] by temporal punishments or burthens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the Holy author of our religion, who being Lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as it was in his Almighty power to do, but to extend it by its influence on reason alone; that the impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who, being themselves but fallible and uninspired men, have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavouring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world and through all time . . . .

The remainder of the stautues states in part as follows:

[N]o man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer, on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinion in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish enlarge, or affect their civil capacities. . . . . . the rights hereby asserted are of the natural rights of mankind, and that if any act shall be hereafter passed to repeal the present, or to narrow its operation, such act shall be an infringement of natural right.

DOMA makes a mockery of these principles. Jefferson summed up the motivations displayed in DOMA: hypocrisy and meanness.

In a move that will likely prompt Virginia Attorney General Ken "Kookinell" Cuccinelli to follow suit Indiana Attorney General Gregg Zoeller (pictured at left) plans on filing an amicus brief with the U. S. Supreme Court in the Prop 8 appeal. Rather than admit that he's a gay hating bigot, Zoeller is using a smoke screen of claiming that as Attorney General he has responsibility to defend state's rights. It sounds like just the kind of bullshit excuse that would appeal to Kookineeli who never missing an opportunity to denigrate and undermine the rights of LGBT Virginians. It will be interesting to see whether Kookinelli jumps on this band wagon in the midst of his campaign for Governor. As noted in previous posts, unlike virtually every other attorney general to run for Governor over the last 30+ years, Kookinelli has not reigned from office so as to avoid the appearance of (i) politicizing the dispensation of justice in Virginia and (ii) forcing taxpayers to help underwrite his insidious campaign. Here are highlights from the Evansville Courier& Press:

Simply put, my legal obligation as attorney for my client, the Indiana Legislature, is to defend state laws legislators have passed. Indiana has a statute defining marriage as between a man and a woman. If the Supreme Court were to strike down a similar California law, Proposition 8, as unconstitutional, then it would put Indiana's statute at risk.

Under our system of justice, both sides in a case must be zealously represented. Although Indiana is not a plaintiff or defendant in either of the cases the Supreme Court will hear, our state and other states have an undeniable interest in asserting each state's legal authority to define marriage as it sees fit within its borders. That's why my office, representing Indiana, jointly filed a friend-of-the-court brief along with 14 other states that urged the Supreme Court to keep the marriage-definition legal authority at the state level.

In the two Supreme Court cases, we are not arguing to strike down the legal authority of other states to issue marriage licenses to same-sex partners, if those states so choose. Instead we defend the authority of each state to pass and enact its own traditional marriage-definition laws at the state level — either through its legislature or directly by voters if it has a referendum process.

Defining marriage is an intrinsic function of state government that ought not be stripped from states as happened to California in one of the cases now being appealed. This is an important question of our time and therefore we asked the U.S. Supreme Court to exercise its role in our constitutional process to provide answers. Representing Indiana's case is my responsibility as Attorney General, an obligation that I will do to the best of my skill and ability.

Apparently Zoeller is to stupid to realize that he has made pretty much the same case as was made by first those who claimed that states had the right to determine whether or not slavery would exist within their boundaries and later by those who supported anti-miscegenation laws. It goes without saying that Zoeller is an ignorance and bigotry embracing Republican.

Looking back over the year that was 2012, it is timely to look at pro-equality and fair campaign finance legislation in Congress that was blocked by Congressional Republicans. It was just LGBT citizens who were screwed over by GOP bigotry. Women and even the disabled were targets of GOP batshitery. Think Progress has a summary of six important bills that dies because of the GOP's anti-equality extremism. Here are excerpts:

1. A minimum wage increase. House Democrats proposed legislation in June that would have raised the national minimum wage to $10 an hour, but Republicans blocked it. The minimum wage is currently $7.25 an hour, even though it would need to be raised to $9.92 to match the borrowing power it had in 1968. If it was indexed to inflation, it would be $10.40 today.

2. Campaign finance transparency. The DISCLOSE Act of 2012, repeatedly blocked by Congressional Republicans, would have allowed voters to know who was funding the attack ads that flooded the airways from secretive groups like Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS.

3. The Buffett Rule. Senate Republicans in April filibustered the Buffet Rule, which would have set a minimum tax on millionaires. Huge majorities of Americans consistently support the rule, which would raise tens of billions of dollars per year from Americans who have seen their incomes explode while their tax rates plummeted.

4. The Employment Non-Discrimination Act.ENDA, which would prohibit discrimination in hiring and employment on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity, has languished in Congress for decades, and Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) “hasn’t thought much” about bringing it to a vote.

5. U.N. treaty to protect the equal rights of the disabled.Republicans blocked ratification of the United Nations treaty to protect the rights of disabled people around the world, falsely claiming it would undermine parents of disabled children. In fact, the treaty would require other nations to revise their laws to resemble the Americans With Disabilities Act and had overwhelming support from veterans and disabilities groups. It failed by 5 votes.

6. The Paycheck Fairness Act. It’s about to be 2013, and women are still getting paid less than men for the same job. This year the Paycheck Fairness Act came up for a vote again (previous efforts to pass the law have been unsuccessful), but the Senate GOP still couldn’t get it together to pass the legislation. Republicans oppose the measure, saying it helps trial lawyers instead of women. But the country’s female doctors, lawyers, and CEOs might be inclined to disagree.

Anyone who isn't an angry heterosexual white male with Christofascists tendencies truly needs to have their head examined if they vote Republican. And, yes, this comment includes the self-loathing loons in the Log Cabin Republicans who remind me of a woman subjected to domestic violence who keeps returning to her abuser.

In their quest to slash and burn all kinds of government programs while seeking to retain tax cuts for the wealthy, Congressional Republicans may be setting the stage for a horrific loss of life if NOAA doesn't receive adequate funding to replace its aging weather satellite system - the system that allowed most recently predictions of where Hurricane Sandy would make landfall and the potential size of the storm surge. As a Forbes article indicates, America may be looking at a time period when there will be no weather satellite coverage. As a result, thousands of lives may be at risk due to a lack of adequate warning of approaching hurricanes and northeasters. Do Congressional Republicans give a damn? Apparently not based on their obstructionism and apparent desire to push the country over the "fiscal cliff." They'd rather pander to and curry the favor of the rabid dogs of the GOP base. Perhaps Scott Rigell's constituents in vulnerable Virginia Beach, Hampton and Newport News need to get on Rigell's ass and demand that their safety be put ahead of his partisan political games. Here are article highlights:

One of the government services that most of us take for granted is weather forecasting. It’s the satellite data provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that meteorologists in the U.S. rely on for accurate atmospheric data to make weather predictions. In particular, predicting the path of extreme weather conditions like hurricanes absolutely depend on NOAA’s polar weather satellites.

For example, if it weren’t for NOAA satellites, weather forecasters likely would not have been able to predict that Hurricane Sandy’s “left hook” into the Eastern Seaboard, which enabled local governments to undertake emergency preparations for the storm.

Unfortunately, due to what Undersecretary of Commerce Jane Lubchenco called, “chronic management problems,” it appears increasingly likely that the U.S. will have to suffer a at least a year without satellites starting around 2017 as the old satellites reach the end of their life cycle and the new ones are launched. And right now there’s no other alternative for getting that data,. The government is scrambling to do what it can to minimize the amount of time between the death of the old satellites and the launch of the new, but right now it looks like there will be at least some small gap. But if we hit the Fiscal Cliff, all bets might be off.

According to the Aerospace Industries Association, a trade association representing aerospace manufacturers, the spending cuts mandated if the U.S. hits the Fiscal Cliff would include an 8.2 percent cut to NOAA’s weather satellite program. The association estimates that this would cost the jobs of 1,000 people who “design, build and operate weather satellites that have no equivalent or redundant system in the public or private sector.”

Regarding the potential for a loss of weather data, Craig J. Craft, commissioner of emergency management for Nassau County told the New York Times in October that ”We cannot afford to lose any enhancement that allows us to accurately forecast any weather event coming our way.”

Scott Rigell personifies much of what is wrong with today's GOP: he's an extremist on both social issues and taxation and puts the interests of special interests ahead of average Americans. Of course, Rigell looks down right sane compared to Ken "Kookinelli" Cuccinelli who will be the GOP nominee for Governor of Virginia.

Even though it makes my head nearly explode at times, I regularly follow some of the wingnut "news" sites and the leading anti-gay Christofascists out of a "know your enemy and what he/she is up to" approach. One cannot combat lies and batshitery unless one stays informed about the activities of the forces of evil as I see many of these anti-gay zealots. Most are motivated by religious fanaticism and/or making money by peddling hatred (e.g., Kirk Cameron who is desperate to avoid total obscurity). Whatever the motivation, it is important to stay informed. In this same vein, Huffington Post has assembled a collection of the twenty five worst anti-gay villains of 2012, although many have been villains for far longer. Here are highlights from the post followed by a slide show:

While it's been a historic year for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community, opponents have also come out in spades. From Chick-fil-A President Dan Cathy to '80s teen heartthrob Kirk Cameron, who said homosexuality is "detrimental" and "destructive," we've certainly heard our fair share of anti-LGBT rhetoric in the last 12 months.

Some of the pundits, politicians and pastors who spoke out against LGBT people made claims so outrageous they were often unintentionally comical. Patrick Wooden, an influential pastor in North Carolina, claimed gay men need to wear diapers "because of what happens to the male anus" after sex. And hardly a week went by without Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association lashing out with a new ridiculous statement about how we live our lives and what we're supposedly doing to America.

Because what we don't know can hurt us and it's critical to be aware of who is working to deny, take away or keep us from our equal rights. So take a look at our slide show of the biggest anti-LGBT villains of 2012

While it has now been many years since I resigned from the Republican Party and gave up the seat on the Virginia Beach City Committee that I had held for eight years, I continue to shake my head in dismay at what has become of a political party I was once proud to belong to and support. I ask my self at times WTF happened? But I know the one word answer: Christianists. Out of short term political expediency, these folks were welcomed to the party and voted into positions on committees across the country and as their influence grew, rational moderates fled the increasing push for a theocratic agenda and attendant greed, fear and hate based policies. Some may ask about the Tea Party's role in the now rampant insanity within the GOP, but with some 85% of the Tea Party identifying as conservative Christians, the two groups are actually one and the same. Those who carry the Tea Party banner simply disguise their religious extremism, in my view. With sane individuals fewer and farther between within the GOP, there now are no leaders who are brave enough or willing to take on the patients within the insane asylum the GOP has become. A piece in BuzzFeed looks at the leadership void. Here are excerpts:

WASHINGTON — Forget the Republican Party’s need to rebrand itself. Forget party elders' promises that they will start reaching out to minorities. And forget the supposed soul-searching that is meant to sweep over the GOP as it undergoes a serious reexamination of its future. Right now, Republicans are having trouble even getting out of their own way.

Conservative groups are splintering. The Romney campaign has dissolved into backbiting and billing disputes. A “plan B” to avert the fiscal cliff proved to be a colossal embarrassment. A teetotaling Idaho senator has been charged with drunk driving. But the most striking symptom of the GOP’s horrible moment is the party’s inability to get done what virtually everyone here knows is in its political best interest: A hasty surrender.

It’s difficult to find a Republican operative who is willing to say on the record that going over the fiscal cliff next Tuesday is a good idea. Provoking a crisis is bad politics: Republicans are resigned to taking the blame. And it’s bad for their policy agenda: They will likely be cornered into a broader tax hike than the best deal they could get from President Barack Obama today, and with none of the spending cuts that might now be on the table. And yet, the dominant emotion among most Republicans here is one of sheer resignation.

“It’s a shit show,” one prominent Republican told BuzzFeed of the GOP’s messaging position. “Tax rates are going to go up on everyone, and we’re going to get the blame.”

The Republican woes have many roots, but here on Capitol Hill, one of the problems is particularly clear. Without a Republican president — or even a presidential nominee — leadership has fallen to two men who are in no position to actually lead a national party anywhere: Boehner and, to a lesser degree, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

McConnell is a tactical master and one of the best politicians in the country. But he is not equipped to be the party's national face, nor is he the sort to quickly impose a firm grip on the floundering party in order to lead it out of the wilderness.

As for Boehner, since the election he’s seen his standing within the party and conservative circles crumble. Conservative news outlets are openly discussing ousting him, accusing him of ideological crimes against his party and in some cases openly mocking him and questioning his honesty.

Expect more chaos within the GOP as the insane base continues to demand policies and positions that harm the country and make the exodus on rational people accelerate.When the base of a political party no longer is tethered to objective reality bad things are bound to happen. Today's GOP is in essence an extreme sectarian party that is welcoming to fewer and fewer Americans.

After successfully reversing that state's ban on same sex marriage and handing the Christofascists the first of what would turn out to be four straight losses on election day, same sex marriages commenced in Maine in the early hours this morning. I am over joyed for LGBT citizens in Maine who have achieved equality under the civil marriage laws. At the same time, I am left to wonder if and when Virginia - which is currently under a GOP controlled General Assembly that basically enacts whatever extremist legislation The Family Foundation demands - will similarly arrive in the 21st century. In a future post I plan on summarizing the batshitery that the Virginia GOP will be promoting in the upcoming legislative session. But, to get back to the happy scene in Maine, the Bangor Daily News has coverage of the first early morning weddings. Here are highlights:

PORTLAND, Maine — The first gay couple to be married in the state of Maine took their vows in a short ceremony in the Portland city clerk’s office at approximately 12:25 a.m.

“We finally feel equal and happy to live in Maine,” said Steven Bridges, who married Michael Snell less than a half-hour after same sex marriages became legal in the state.

By 2 a.m. Saturday, the line had emptied out after a total of 15 gay and lesbian couples had acquired marriage licenses in Portland, with six of those couples exchanging vows on the spot. Another couple was married on the city hall’s front steps and then went back inside to return their license.

The hand-holding grooms sported purple carnation corsages, matching T-shirts printed with the phrase “love is love,” and grins so big they hardly seemed to fit on their faces.

Snell and Bridges, both of Portland, have been together for nine years and had a commitment ceremony six years ago, but late Friday night they were more than ready to make their love legal. The couple was the first in line to be married beginning at 12:01 a.m. Saturday in one of the state’s first legal same-sex marriage ceremonies.

Katie Snell, 27, of Lexington, Mass., Snell’s daughter, said that the couple weren’t the only delighted members of the family. “It’s been a long time coming,” she said of the imminent nuptials. “I’m absolutely ecstatic. I’m so happy for this. I couldn’t be happier.”

Portland was one of the state’s municipalities that opened offices early so that eager couples could go ahead and tie the knot. In addition to having a clerk at hand to provide marriage licenses, the city made a notary public available to make wedding vows official. Maine no longer has a waiting period before couples can get married.

Steven Jones and Jamous Lizotte, both of Portland, wore tuxedos and arranged laurel wreaths on their heads while waiting for midnight, when they could get married. “After nine years of being together, we decided to go all the way,” Lizotte, formerly of St. Agatha, said. When he learned that the first day that same-sex marriage would be legal fell on his 35th birthday, it seemed like a sign. “It’s a finale,” he said. “It’s been a long time.”

Not that despite the dire predictions of the Christofascists, the world did not end and civilization did not collapse. Also note the way the couples mentioned finally feeling equal. The bans on same sex marriage have nothing to do with "protecting marriage." No, their sole goal is to keep LGBT citizens inferior and to punish them for refusing to subscribe to the Christofascists' hate and fear based version of Christianity. There will be no true freedom of religion in America until the Christofascists are defeated politically in ever state in the nation and driven into much deserved political irrelevance. They are a cancer that needs to be removed from the political realm entirely.

The game of chicken in Washington continues as the Congressional Republicans - some of whom are insane themselves in my view - continue to pander to the Neanderthal know nothings and modern day Pharisee like extremists of the admittedly toxic base. Rather than offend these ignorance embracing, hate filled and down right horrible elements of the party that the party leadership cynically allowed to gain ascendancy, the GOP members of Congress are willing to allow the nation to go over the "fiscal cliff" and possibly start a new great recession, throw countless unemployed Americans literally to the wolves, and allow draconian cuts to social programs. Once again, I find myself ashamed that I was ever a Republican and I wonder how anyone decent can continue any party affiliation with the GOP. A column in the Washington Post looks at the latest effort by Barack Obama to avert this disaster and to set the stage where Congressional Republicans will be forced to show their real priorities to the American people. Here are excerpts:

President Obama, during a brief statement to the press just now [yesterday], said Harry
Reid and Mitch McConnell are in the process of working out a deal to avert the
“fiscal cliff” tax hikes, and pronounced himself optimistic about the talks. The
key to Obama’s statement, though, is that he spelled out the political reality
Republican leaders will be left facing if a deal is not reached:

Senators Reid and McConnell are working on such an agreement as we speak.
But if an agreement isn’t reached in time between Senator Reid and Senator
McConnell, then I will urge Senator Reid to bring to the floor a basic package
for an up or down vote, one that protects the middle class from an income tax
hike, extends the vital lifeline of unemployment insurance to two million
Americans looking for a job, and lays the groundwork for future cooperation on
more economic growth and deficit reduction. I believe such a proposal could pass
both houses with bipartisan majorities, as long as those leaders allow it to
actually come to a vote. If members of the House and Senate want to vote No,
they can.

The key word there is “majorities.” Obama is demanding that Mitch McConnell
allow a straight up-or-down vote on Harry Reid’s fallback proposal, if the two
sides cannot reach a deal. If no deal is reached, Obama is daring McConnell to
filibuster a continued tax cut for the middle class and daring Boehner not to
hold a vote on it.

A senior Senate Dem aide tells me that the fallback proposal Reid is working
on would extend tax cuts on income just up to $250,000, not up to $400,000, as
Obama’s most recent compromise proposal did. What this means is that if Senate
Republican leaders fail to agree with Senate Dems on a proposal, the fallback
plan Reid will offer will essentially rescind Obama’s offer to raise the income
threshold to $400,000.

[B]y daring Republicans one last time to refuse to allow simple majority votes on
extending the middle class tax cuts, Obama is signaling that if we do go over
the cliff, he intends to extract maximum political pain for it.

The GOP needs to experience severe political pain. It has become the chief obstacle to improving the nation's economy and future prospects. It is also the chief proponent of throwing the Gospel message of aiding the poor, the sick, and the homeless down the toilet. The hypocrisy of these alleged "family values" politicians is shocking. In truth, they only care about the wealthy and white male conservative Christians. Given their preference, the rest of us are simply supposed to disappear from America.

I've written about the struggle that many of us in the coming out process encounter: overcoming the insidiousness of internalized homophobia. Letting go of all the religious brainwashing and stigma ingrained in us from the surrounding society that until recently had only a 100% negative message about being gay. For me, it took years of therapy to undo the Catholic Church had done f*cking up my mind. And that was just the beginning of the process. But it isn't just LGBT individuals who have to overcome this internalized homophobia. One friend who is an amazing LGBT ally and an Equality Virginia "legend," has spoken about how she had to "come out" to be an active and open ally to the LGBT community. A piece in The Atlantic looks at the realization by a straight actor that he too suffers from internalized homophobia. Here are some excerpts:

I am not gay. I have no shortage of gay friends. My uncle is gay. I've marched in a gay pride parade. More than half of the roommates I have lived with are gay. I support marriage equality.

So it comes as a shock to me when I realize that, actually, if I am honest with myself, I'm not comfortable with kissing another man on camera. I really don't want to book this part.

I don't want people to think I'm gay. And I'm even more uncomfortable because that isn't a thought that I want to have.

Acting is a curious profession. The Oscars tend to award actors who transfigure themselves. Think of Charlize Theron in Monster or Phillip Seymour Hoffman in Capote. And most actors actively want to stretch outside of themselves. That is, after all, why we tried to make a career out of pretending. But people tend to assume things about you after they have seen you onstage. The character and the person are conflated.

Still, I wouldn't turn down a commercial that required me to pretend to slap a child, or one where I played a Nazi. And—assuming the ad wasn't advocating child abuse or Nazism—I don't think I would feel odd about the audition.

I ask my theatrical agent if there is any industry stigma about doing a gay role. "No," he says, "not since Will and Grace in the '90s." I call my commercial agent to ask him the same question. "No," he says. "Ikea was doing ads with gay couples in the '90s. Will and Grace really changed things." "But you had to ask me two times if I was comfortable," I protest. "We would do that on any spot where you have to kiss," he tells me.

Gigi Nicolas, the director of on-air promotions at Logo, tells me that at least I was not alone in my discomfort. "We had to do a second round of casting," she says. "Far fewer people auditioned than I expected. Most of my top choices just didn't show up."

There is a long history of discomfort within the industry on gay actors playing straight roles and vice versa. Perhaps more significantly, there is a long history of discomfort within the industry—and across the globe—that gay people exist at all.

The number of straight people playing wildly lauded roles where the character is gay or vice versa seems to corroborate my agents' contention that any stigma these roles may once have had has disappeared. Tom Hanks, Neil Patrick Harris, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Portia De Rossi, Heath Ledger, Ian McKellen, Michael K. Williams, Cynthia Nixon, Eric McCormack, Ving Rhames, Sean Penn, Michael C. Hall, Wesley Snipes, John Leguizamo, and so on.

While there is no ready tool or survey to measure homophobia or its absence within Hollywood, it seems that I can't blame my own discomfort with the Logo commercial on the prejudices of others.

If you ever want to feel really wretched about what a big jerk you are, there are worse ways to do it than logging onto Harvard's Project Implicit. Psychologists at Harvard created a series of tests that measure your reaction time when you associate positive and negative concepts with different social groups. The results give you an indication of how racist or sexist or agist or generally prejudiced you are on a subconscious level. I take some solace in the fact that my preferences are only moderate. But even if it's temperate about it, my subconscious is essentially racist, agist, and homophobic. It is the backwater redneck of my brain. And, apparently, I'm prejudiced against backwater rednecks.

The essential, uncomfortable, flaw with all the progress on gay rights is that even after legislation is passed and everyone's rights are equal on paper—which still sometimes seems a long way off—there is the longer, trickier work of trying to divest each person of the ugly human prejudices we all inherited when we were born.

I, at least, am sorry. You don't have to believe in a Judeo-Christian god to find something redeeming in confession. I am sorry that I balked at the idea of pretending to be gay. I am sorry that my uncle went home alone all those years. I am sorry for the whole ugly human history of slights and hate crimes and exclusion.

In contrast to the author of the article, the Christofascists are not the least bit sorry for the hate they sow and harm they do. Indeed, the professional Christians and the child rapist protectors in the Catholic Church hierarchy revel in the stigma and bigotry they strive so hard to keep alive. It's beyond ugly. Meanwhile, the ruminations of the author may give straight readers of this blog an inkling of what we gays go through and have to face every single day. It's no wonder many of us have psychological issues to overcome. The hate merchants have been all too successful in creating a toxic world within which we must live. The good news is that things are getting better, albeit not quickly enough for some - like the LGBT youth who continue to take their own lives. As things improve, we can expect the Christofascists and Catholic Church hierarchy to become even more foul in the lies that disseminate against LGBT people.

Anyone with money invested in the stock market - and that equates to anyone with mutual funds or a pension or 401(k) - ought to be blowing up the phones of the GOP extremists in the House of Representatives and making it very clear what the consequences will be for them at the polls in 2014 if these members of Congress do not get their heads out of their asses and strike a deal to avoid the so-called fiscal cliff. Locally, readers need to call Randy Forbes, Scott Rigell and Bob Wittman and rip them a new one. All three are extremists who happily prostitute themselves to the Christofascists and Tea Party fanatics. They care NOTHING for average Americans who aren't white, preferably male, evangelical Christians. And all three hold LGBT citizens in open contempt. An article in the Washington Post looks at the likely crash of the stock markets if these bastards do not stop the game playing with peoples lives and financial well being. Here are highlights:

Wall Street is finally waking up to the troubling
prospect that lawmakers may not reach a deal to avert the “fiscal cliff” before
the new year, with stocks swinging dramatically Thursday in response to news
from Capitol Hill.

[W]ith the final days trickling away before the year-end deadline, the markets
Thursday experienced their greatest volatility since the summer. It was also the
fourth consecutive day of losses on Wall Street.

Investors responded almost instantly to pronouncements from leading
lawmakers. Shares plunged in the morning after Senate Majority Leader Harry M.
Reid (D-Nev.) predicted a deal would be unlikely by Tuesday and, with investors
grasping at a straw of hope, bounced back in the afternoon when House Speaker
John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) said he would call members back to work Sunday.

Analysts and economists said investors were finally recognizing that a
typical last-minute Washington deal could prove elusive and instead lawmakers
were gearing up for hand-to-hand combat over the weeks to come. If there’s no
deal before Tuesday, taxes would rise for most Americans and deep government
spending cuts would begin, dealing the economy a painful blow.

“There’s a realization sinking in,” said Vincent Reinhart, chief U.S.
economist at Morgan Stanley. “It’s a learning process. People are beginning to
think that the cliff is with us for a while longer.”

Beyond unsettling the markets, the fiscal cliff of automatic tax increases
and spending cuts is already beginning to take a bite out of the U.S. economy,
which had been showing signs of accelerating growth.

On Thursday, a new report on consumer confidence came in well below the
analysts’ expectations, reversing months of steady gains. The Conference Board
consumer confidence index plunged to 65.1 from 71.5, most of the drop driven by
declining consumer expectations about what the future will hold.

For most Americans, going over the fiscal cliff would mean declining
confidence in the economy, rising anxiety and a near-immediate hit to take-home
pay as higher taxes take effect. But the unemployed would be especially hard
hit. Unless an agreement is reached, many jobless Americans will not be able to
apply for unemployment benefits after Saturday, and no more checks will arrive
after next week.

As noted before on this blog and elsewhere, today's Republican Party is unfit to govern and needs to be driven to a permanent minority status with so few elected officials that it can no longer play insane games with the lives of working Americans. The GOP truly deserves to become extinct. It has become the political equivalent of a rabid dog and needs to be shot.

In a movement that I would like to see really take root in America, thousands of Dutch Roman Catholics are seeking to "de-baptize" themselves and formally leave the Roman Catholic Church. The movement has taken on steam after Pope Benedict' recent claims that gay marriage threaten humanity and similar hate filled batshitery. By "de-baptizing" individuals formally leave the Church which has them stricken from Church membership rosters and bars the Church from carrying inflated membership numbers. Simply no longer attending church services does not get one removed from the membership roles - a phenomenon that allows the Church to publicly claim that its membership numbers are not tanking as individuals flee the Church's Medieval social strictures. (I had myself formally removed from the membership roster of the Diocese of Richmond a number of years ago). Here are highlights from Yahoo News:

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Thousands of Dutch Catholics are researching how they can leave the church in protest at its opposition to gay marriage, according to the creator of a website aimed at helping them find the information.

Tom Roes, whose website allows people to download the documents needed to leave the church, said traffic on ontdopen.nl - "de-baptise.nl" - had soared from about 10 visits a day to more than 10,000 after Pope Benedict's latest denunciation of gay marriage this month.

"Of course it's not possible to be 'de-baptized' because a baptism is an event, but this way people can unsubscribe or de-register themselves as Catholics," Roes told Reuters.

In a Christmas address to Vatican officials, the pope signaled the he was ready to forge alliances with other religions against gay marriage, saying the family was threatened "to its foundations" by attempts to change its "true structure".

Roes, a television director, said he left the church and set up his website partly because he was angry about the way the church downplayed or covered-up sexual abuse in Catholic orphanages, boarding schools and seminaries.

A report by an independent commission published a year ago said there had been tens of thousands of victims of child sexual abuse in the Netherlands since 1945 and criticized the church's culture of silence.

Benedict XVI - who engaged in cover ups himself in Germany - is fine with sexual abuse of minors by priests as long as the story does go public, but recognizing committed, loving same sex couples through CIVIL laws is a threat to the family and humanity itself. The man is beyond horrible.

In general we LGBT Virginians look across the Potomac to Washington, D.C., and Maryland with envy. Compared to Virginia where ant-gay bigotry is virtually incorporated into the state's laws, our neighbors to the north are beacons of liberalism and equality - especially since both have passed legislation allowing same sex marriage. But that does not mean that those locales are devoid of anti-gay bigots, Christofascists and modern day Pharisee types. A case in point comes from the picturesque City of Annapolis, Maryland where the Christofascists who own Discover Annapolis Tours are axing all wedding services rather that provides services to same sex couples as required by the Maryland public accommodation laws (Virginia, of course, has no such laws that would protect same sex couples or single LGBT citizens). Both the Annapolis Patch and the Baltimore Sun have coverage of the smug bigotry of the company's owner, Matt Grubbs (pictured above) that resulted in the move. First highlights from the Sun article:

An Annapolis company whose old-fashioned trolleys are iconic in the city's wedding scene has abandoned the nuptial industry rather than serve same-sex couples.

The owner of Discover Annapolis Tours said he decided to walk away from $50,000 in annual revenue instead of compromising his Christian convictions when same-sex marriages become legal in Maryland in less than a week. And he has urged prospective clients to lobby state lawmakers for a religious exemption for wedding vendors.

Yes, you read that correctly, Grubbs and his fellow bigots want the special right to ignore the law and a special privilege of discriminating against everyday citizens. The selfishness and self centered focus of the Christofascist truly knows no boundaries. The Patch article contains this:

The email was provided to Patch by Chris Belkot on Nov. 29. He received it from Grubbs after Belkot inquired about using the company's wedding services this spring.

Grubbs confirmed the email, and said his attorney advised him to shut down the wedding part of his business immediately because he could be sued for refusing services to same-sex couples.

"We’re a Christian-owned company, and we just can't support gay marriages," Grubbs said. "We're not trying to make a statement. We're not trying to make a point. We're just trying to be faithful Christians."

Grubbs' business, which provided trolley cars to transport wedding parties and guests from churches to receptions, still provides tours and other site seeing services.

Frankly, the "faithful Christian" batshitery makes me want to vomit. If Grubbs is like other Christofascists, he likely votes Republican and would give tax cuts to the obscenely wealthy while cutting services to the poor and hungry. He by extension also likely opposes extending health care to the uninsured, wants to disenfranchise blacks, and wants to control women's bodies. Not exactly the stuff Christ spoke of in the Gospels. The feigned piety and hypocrisy is simply unbelievable. But, nowadays, that is what most often defines those who like to loudly proclaim themselves as being "faithful Christians."

While eating at late dinner - the year end craziness at the office has been a bitch - I was watching a MSNBC segment on the impact the fiscal cliff will have on the unemployed who will lose coverage and/or see significant decreases in coverage as of January 1, 2012. Once again I was struck by the almost unbelievable hypocrisy of John Boehner (not surprisingly, a Catholic), the GOP House members and, of course, the Christofascist elements of the GOP base all of whom go about professing their religiosity, wearing their religion on their sleeves, and congratulating themselves on their piety. Meanwhile, they all seek a reverse Robin Hood social policy and view the unemployed as so must disposable garbage. The Pharisee of the Gospels are downright kind and virtuous compared to these people. There are indeed few better examples of why one would want to walk away from Christianity not to mention the Republican Party. A piece in Politico looks at Boehner's intention to continue to play political games to please the modern day Pharisee crowd while destroying the lives of millions of other Americans. Here are highlights:

House Speaker John Boehner told House Republicans that he’s “not interested” in passing a fiscal cliff deal with “mostly Democrat votes,” his most direct comments about how he’ll manage the remaining negotiations over tax increases and spending cuts.

Boehner’s comment is significant because it means he is going to push for an agreement that most of the 241 House Republican could support. Just a week ago, rank-and-file Republicans rejected a Boehner-authored proposal that would have extended tax breaks on income of less than $1 million — a number far higher than what they would get under plans offered by President Barack Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.).

On Thursday’s conference call, which almost all House Republicans dialed in to, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) told lawmakers to “plan on being in town through the following week to conduct the business at hand,” according to a source.

Boehner’s message to House Republicans was the same as what he’s saying privately to other party leaders. Boehner said the nation is “on the edge of the fiscal cliff” and added that the Senate hasn’t given the House a reason to return.

But the Ohio Republican also offered some new details to his Republican colleagues. Rep. Tim Griffin (R-Ark.) asked about the debt limit and what leverage that gives House Republicans. Boehner said he still sees February and March as the true deadline. The optics of not being in Washington are still of concern to House Republicans. Members were worried about being hammered in the press for not being in Washington. The Senate is in town at least Thursday and Friday, and Obama returned from Hawaii to deal with the fiscal cliff.

Boehner’s move on bringing the House back into session on Sunday. . . . . is an attempt to protect Republicans from getting blamed if the country goes over the fiscal cliff, which looks more likely by the hour.

There have been continued staff-level discussions on Thursday, but neither side has put any new offer on the table in order to break the deadlock.

Let's be clear. Boehner and most in the GOP House conference are assholes and most likely deserve a special place in Hell for their callousness towards other citizens, their open racism and bigotry against all but their white Christofascist and millionaire supporters.

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Out gay attorney in a committed relationship; formerly married and father of three wonderful children; sometime activist and political/news junkie; survived coming out in mid-life and hope to share my experiences and reflections with others.
In the career/professional realm, I am affiliated with Caplan & Associates PC where I practice in the areas of real estate, estate planning (Wills, Trusts, Advanced Medical Directives, Financial Powers of Attorney, Durable Medical Powers of Attorney); business law and commercial transactions; formation of corporations and limited liability companies and legal services to the gay, lesbian and transgender community, including birth certificate amendment.

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